Science Fiction Quotations

From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits

Selected for AAUP Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2006

In this unprecedented collection of science fiction and fantasy quotations, the reader revisits the stunning moment when Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster first comes to life; witnesses the transformation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde; is present when Bruce Wayne resolves to become Batman; and overhears the cosmic conclusions of The Incredible Shrinking Man. Drawing upon two centuries of the vast and provocative literature of science fiction and fantasy, this comprehensive book presents more than 2,900 quotations from wide-ranging sources, including science fiction and fantasy stories, novels, films, and television programs.

The quotations are organized by topic—alien worlds; darkness and light; robots, androids, and cyborgs; machines and technology; weapons; and more than one hundred others. The reader will encounter the wit and wisdom of renowned authors (H. G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin) along with definitive versions of such important statements as Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and Star Trek’s Prime Directive.

With its thorough index, this book is both an invaluable resource for the writer or scholar and an irresistible page-turner for the curious browser.

Gary Westfahl teaches at the University of California, Riverside. He has published extensively in the field of science fiction and in 2003 received the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to science fiction and fantasy scholarship.

From Science Fiction Quotations:

“There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”—Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, The Matrix (film, 1999)

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.”—Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)